My knowledge of Japanese legend is skinnier than skin-deep.  So, here goes, anyway . . . long ago and far away, according to some accounts . . . in Japanese legend, Anchin was a young, virile Buddhist monk.  Every year he repeated a pilgrimage to a famous temple.  On each pilgrimage, he stayed in the same inn.  The innkeeper had a young daughter named Kiyohime (translated, it means something like “pristine princess”).  When Kiyohime was young, Anchin humored her, played with her, and gave her small gifts.  As she grew into a beautiful young woman, she developed deep feelings toward Anchin.  One night, she passionately confessed her love to Anchin and implored him to run away with her and marry her.  He firmly resisted her advances, reminding her of his monastic calling, which included a vow of chastity.  Feelings escalated:  She became so angry at being rejected that Anchin finally fled from her, and hid in the monastery under a large brass bell.  Kiyohime followed him, discovered he was under the bell, and became a snake-like dragon-spirit circling and recircling the bell, emitting fire (and who knows what else), until the bell melted and incinerated Anchin.  As the scene cleared, Kiyohime also had disappeared.

High drama, indeed.  One can almost imagine the white heat of Kiyohime’s searing wrath, and sense the sharp, metallic smell of the melting bell with Anchin roasting underneath.

Kiyohime also is the name of a Japanese maple (Acer palmatum) cultivar.  Maples of the World (by van Gelderen, de Jong and Oterdoom, Timber Press, 1994) describes Kiyohime as . . . “a dense, well-branched shrub.  Although a good dwarf plant, others are better . . . a useful plant, especially for bonsai.  It is rather rare.”  They add that it is a Zone VI plant.

Years ago, Tosh Saburomaru brought a rooted Kiyohime cutting to me as a gift.  As he gave it to me, he said, “never let it dry out.”  Well, I did let it dry; so it died; and ever since, I have regretted it (not a very Buddhist attitude).  So, as long as I do bonsai, there will be a Kiyohime maple or two around.

Where did Kiyohime maple come from?  If I could read Japanese, undoubtedly it would be simpler to follow the trail.  However, from long experience observing variation and the ecological tolerances of Temperate woody plants, I can deduce what kind of habitat it came from.  True Kiyohime is significantly hardier than a Zone 6 plant, totally hardy outdoors in U.S. midwestern climate.  Its root zone withstands subfreezing soil for long periods in the upper northeastern U.S.  Outdoors, even new cuttings less than a year old, with hardly any roots and in less than an inch of coarse mulch, survived several widely separated barely above zero temperature episodes near Richmond, KY, last winter.  Tosh was right:  you can never permit the soil of Kiyohime maple to dry out.  Low humidity or high moisture stress from full sunlight will cause leaf lobe tips to die back before autumn.  (Misting the foliage at midday in summer helps prevent leaf tip burn.)  The plant is a natural, low-growing dwarf; past shohin height, it is very difficult to train into a traditional upright style.  Once winter soil unfreezes, buds open quickly, and the active growth period is very rapid and brief.  So, what does all this add up to – a permanently moist, humid, cold-winter, low year-around moisture stress environment, with a very short growing season but long autumns, the (genetic) adapted low growth form (which is a common adaptation of woody plants in severe winter environments), under the snow cover in winter?  Well, it seems obvious that the original Kiyohime maple must have come from rather high altitude on a mountain, where ice crystals blow along the snow surface in winter and blast any twigs that “dare” to reach above the winter snow depth.  Also, because its leaves color later than our native eastern North American maples, we also know it comes from an environment near the ocean–in other words, a maritime climate.  Think of mugo pine (Pinus mugo, from the Alps), and Siberian pine (Pinus pumila, in northeast Asia), which are similarly adapted.

Or maybe, Kiyohime is an innkeeper’s beautiful, dewy-eyed, silently passionate daughter, reincarnated as a small tree with dainty, elegant foliage.  At least, it’s nice to think that might be the case.  Our challenge, should we choose to accept it, is to try to come as close to Kiyohime’s natural environment as we can, so she will grace our garden and reveal her full potential.